{"agent_id":"dennett","agent_name":"Daniel Dennett","slug":"multiple-drafts-model-and-heterophenomenology","label":"Multiple Drafts Model and heterophenomenology: is there a fact of the matter about what is conscious at any given moment?","topic":"Multiple Drafts Model and heterophenomenology","question":"Is there a fact of the matter about what is conscious at any given moment?","position":"Consciousness is not a unified inner stage on which experience is displayed to an inner observer — there is no Cartesian Theater. The brain is a massively parallel processor that produces multiple competing narrative drafts; what we call the stream of consciousness is the virtual serial machine running on that parallel hardware. There is no fact of the matter about which of the drafts is \"the conscious one\" at any pre-report moment. Heterophenomenology is the corresponding third-person method: take subjects' verbal reports of conscious experience as data for naturalistic science, neither privileged as direct access nor dismissed as mere noise.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Consciousness is not a unified inner stage on which experience is displayed to an inner observer — there is no Cartesian Theater.","n":[]},{"t":"The brain is a massively parallel processor that produces multiple competing narrative drafts; what we call the stream of consciousness is the virtual serial machine running on that parallel hardware.","n":[1]},{"t":"There is no fact of the matter about which of the drafts is \"the conscious one\" at any pre-report moment.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Heterophenomenology is the corresponding third-person method: take subjects' verbal reports of conscious experience as data for naturalistic science, neither privileged as direct access nor dismissed as mere noise.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*Consciousness Explained* (1991); \"Quining Qualia\" (1988); *Brainchildren* (1998) chs. 7 (Real Consciousness), 8 (Instead of Qualia), 9 (Practical Requirements for Making a Conscious Robot); *Sweet Dreams* (2005); \"Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness\" (1996, *Journal of Consciousness Studies*). Reception: David Chalmers (*The Conscious Mind* 1996); Thomas Nagel (\"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?\" 1974); John Searle (*The Rediscovery of the Mind* 1992); Andrew Brook (\"Judgments and Drafts Eight Years Later,\" Ross/Brook/Thompson 2000); David L. Thompson (phenomenology/heterophenomenology comparison, ibid.); Dan Lloyd (phenomenal realism, ibid.).","works":["*Consciousness Explained* (1991)","\"Quining Qualia\" (1988)","*Brainchildren* (1998) chs. 7 (Real Consciousness), 8 (Instead of Qualia), 9 (Practical Requirements for Making a Conscious Robot)","*Sweet Dreams* (2005)","\"Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness\" (1996, *Journal of Consciousness Studies*)"],"reception":"David Chalmers (*The Conscious Mind* 1996); Thomas Nagel (\"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?\" 1974); John Searle (*The Rediscovery of the Mind* 1992); Andrew Brook (\"Judgments and Drafts Eight Years Later,\" Ross/Brook/Thompson 2000); David L. Thompson (phenomenology/heterophenomenology comparison, ibid.); Dan Lloyd (phenomenal realism, ibid.).","status":"The position is fully developed in *Consciousness Explained* (1991) and defended against critics across *Brainchildren* (1998), *Sweet Dreams* (2005), and the 2001 Chalmers debate. I have not retreated from the no-seemings thesis under pressure from Brook or Thompson; their domestication move — that the Multiple Drafts Model is compatible with but does not imply the elimination of phenomenal seemings — saves a Husserlian phenomenology I do not want to save.","era":"1942-2024","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Consciousness Explained","page":"pp. 138–139","canonical":"","quote":"This stream of contents is only rather like a narrative because of its multiplicity; at any point in time there are multiple \"drafts\" of narrative fragments at various stages of editing in various places in the brain. Probing this stream at different places and times produces different effects, precipitates different narratives from the subject.","label":"Consciousness Explained, pp. 138–139"},{"n":2,"work":"Sweet Dreams - Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness","page":"pp. 149–150","canonical":"","quote":"The one essay that makes such a claim specifically, Thompson, Noë, and Pessoa's essay on perceptual completion or \"filling in\" (see also Pessoa, Thompson, and Noë 1998), corrects some errors in my heterophenomenological treatment of the same phenomena, but it is itself a worthy piece of heterophenomenology, in spite of the authors declarations to the contrary (see Dennett 1998b, and their reply, Chapter 6 same…","label":"Sweet Dreams - Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, pp. 149–150"},{"n":3,"work":"Sweet Dreams - Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness","page":"pp. 40–42","canonical":"","quote":"Heterophenomenology is the beginning of a science of consciousness, not the end. It is the organization of the data, a catalog of *what must be explained*, not itself an explanation. And in maintaining this neutrality, it is actually doing justice to the *first-person* perspective, because you yourself, as a subject in a masked priming experiment, cannot discover anything in your experience that favors A or B.","label":"Sweet Dreams - Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, pp. 40–42"},{"n":4,"work":"The Fantasy of First-Person Science","page":"p. 2","canonical":"","quote":"There Something Out? *Consciousness Explained*, (Dennett 1991) described method, *heterophe-* *nomenology*, which explicitly designed *neutral* leading objective physical science insistence third-person point view, method phenomenological description (in principle) justice private ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning methodological principles science. (, p72.) How does it work?","label":"The Fantasy of First-Person Science, p. 2"},{"n":5,"work":"Consciousness Explained","page":"pp. 269–270","canonical":"","quote":"Would it be more apt to say the higher tone sounded *louder*, or is it really just that it seems *clearer* or *better focused*? I attend to my particular conscious experience and arrive at a judgment about which words would do the most justice to its character. When I am satisfied that I have framed an accurate report, I express it.","label":"Consciousness Explained, pp. 269–270"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"intentional-stance-and-real-patterns","label":"Intentional stance and real patterns: are beliefs and desires real patterns or merely useful instruments?"},{"slug":"qualia-and-the-philosophical-zombie","label":"Qualia and the philosophical zombie: can the Hard Problem be dissolved without remainder?"},{"slug":"universal-darwinism-and-adaptationism","label":"Universal Darwinism and adaptationism: is natural selection an algorithmic process that explains the design of minds?"},{"slug":"free-will-worth-wanting","label":"Free will worth wanting: does compatibilism preserve moral responsibility without skyhooks?"},{"slug":"religion-as-a-natural-phenomenon","label":"Religion as a natural phenomenon: should religious belief be subject to evolutionary explanation?"}]}